From: Paul S. <pa...@tr...> - 2002-09-06 14:13:17
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On 6 Sep 2002 at 7:38, Oscar Fuentes wrote: > Christopher Faylor <cg...@re...> writes: > > > On Fri, Sep 06, 2002 at 05:42:24AM +0200, Oscar Fuentes wrote: > > >But I think MinGW must not be a drop-in replacement for MSVC. > > > > We aren't talking about just MinGW, though. Several projects use > > these header files. > > > > I'd be interested in hearing your rationale for not making MinGW a > > drop-in replacement for MSVC, though. > > First: if you want MSVC, get the real MSVC. I'll agree with this, to be a drop in replacement for MSVC you need to replicate some of the bugs that existed in V2 that still exist in V7 and will probably be in V255... > > Second: I doubt very much that MinGW's gcc can be at any point on the > future a real drop-in for MSVC. MSVC has too much extensions and > standards deviations. The problem is that you end up trying to hit a fast moving target, every time MS comes up with a new concept (currently .NET) they release a new slightly incompatable with previous versions of MSVC to support it, and a new incompatable database support layer more complex and buggy then the previous one. > Third: As a C++ programmer who cares about using real C++ and be able > to build my projects on other platforms and compilers, I *hope* MinGW > will not be a drop-in for MSVC. For the same reason I don't use MSVC I > would not use a "MSVC-compliant" MinGW. I think that MinGW is better serving the public as the Windows side of a multi- platform C++ environment, and when you combine it with a tool like wxWindows which is a multi-platform GUI tool, then you have the ability to use essentailly the same code on Unix and Windows, and that is 100 times more useful then a MSVC clone. Come to think of it, wasn't the reason for MinGW as a light weight cygwin, which was a Windows version of a unix development system. > > It seems like there are frequent discussions about how to arrange > > things in the header files so that they closely mimic the layout > > used by MSVC. I'm sure I can easily find examples of this in the > > email archives. > > This does not means people want to mimic MSVC on every aspect. Even it > doesn't mean that it is convenient to mimic MSVC's header layout on > every aspect. I would rather we use the gcc header layout, and find ways to add the Windows specific stuff, it's unlikely that people are going to be maintain multiple compiler compatability, and those that do, probably are doing so to support MSVC, BCC and unix, so if we stay close to unix, we should be fine. Personally I think it's nicer to be able to simply run ./configure and let Autoconf be able to figure out what is going on, whether the compile is on Windows or Unix. Paul Schmidt, President Tricat Technologies pa...@tr... www.tricattechnologies.com |